


Words

by An_Ode



Series: Not Quite Whole, but Happy [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Betty Cooper Loves Jughead Jones, Character Study, Dark Betty Cooper, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Introspection, Non-Graphic Smut, Praise Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-03 23:17:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16335122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/An_Ode/pseuds/An_Ode
Summary: People called her 'perfect' called her a 'good girl' with a sneer or a teasing tone. She hated it, hated it with everything in her, with every ounce of blood in her body. Unless he says it- unless his voice rumbles out and traces those words across her skin.-Or-Betty Cooper has had a lot of shit said about her but somehow, when Jughead Jones says it, she's alright with it.





	Words

Betty Cooper. It was such a generic name, like a personification of the retro longings that lived throughout their sleepy town that had only recently been awoken. Darkness ran under the skin of their street, a poison in their veins that no one wanted to look at, let alone address. Blond hair, bright eyes, and shiny white teeth bracketed by dimples if she could stretch her mouth wide enough.

Good grades, good behavior, good cloths- Betty Cooper was a good girl in every conceivable way she could be. People said it with a sneer, with a teasing lilt, with confusion. It was as if those two words made her every future movement clear as day.

She’d heard Chuck say it like the phrase personified a challenge. Her mother said it as a defense when accusations were flung her way. Archie used it to downplay his own worth in the face of them becoming a ‘we.’ Fred Andrews said it with approval, FP with distrust. A label assigned for the purposes of whoever wheedled it.

_‘Good girl,’ he would praise her, the night dark but moon bright against pale skin._

_‘There’s a good girl,’ the words growled into her neck were different. The shivers they sent down her spine so juxtapose to the nausea that usually built when it came out of anyone else’s mouth._

_‘That’s my good girl, Betty.’_

The word ‘perfect’ got thrown around with lighthearted teasing. She hated that word, hated it with every ounce of blood in her body. They expected everything from her, and they used that word as a reminder that the bar was set higher, but only for her. If ‘perfection’ was her normal, then anything average was failing in technicolor.

She existed to be the shining example of her mother’s separation from the Southside. Pony-tails and bubblegum pink lipstick and she was Alice Coopers personification of new skin and new life. Maybe it was an attempt to keep her from going down the same road Alice had tumbled and roughed down. Maybe her mother was living vicariously through her.  

It didn’t matter though, because when the word ‘perfect’ was spit from her mother’s lips it had the same effect. Nails in palms, heart beat erratic, it was said like an accusation. It was what she _used to be_ , a standard she could no longer meet. Rage, disgust, _fear_ , the word stuck to her like a tattooed clearance label, reminding everyone she was in the 50% off pile due to the damage she’d sustained.

 _‘God you’re perfect’_ _it was a rumble in his chest, hands gripping her hips so hard it stung. She hoped it would leave bruises._

_His voice was almost reverent, like every time they came together it was a gift he didn’t deserve to be given._

_‘Look at you Betty, god your perfect.’_

Sometimes Betty looked at Archie Andrews and hated him. She doesn’t mean to, honestly, but she wonders what would have happened if he’d kissed her back the night of their Sophomore dance. She wonders what would have happened if he had said the words back and meant them.

It terrifies her, because she knows what Betty Cooper would have done to keep him if he’d kissed her back, if he’d said those words and meant them. Their relationship would have been drowned in fear, that he would discover the scars on her palms, the rage in her chest that would crest and crash. It would have been tainted by her shoving the darkness deeper, farther into herself until there was nothing but a hole where who she truly was used to be.

A scene unfolds in her mind- Archie being concerned about her, wanting her to get help. Archie staying because he was the ‘good guy’ and she was the ‘good girl’ and that’s what good guys did. She sees him taking more time at work, pouring his soul into his music as their relationship disintegrated in front of her eyes. She would’ve begged him to stay, cried and wept and laid herself bare at the prospect of him pulling away from her.

Weak, that’s what she would’ve been with Archie Andrews. Betty Cooper is stronger than that, so much stronger than that. She would never beg a boy, would never stoop to that level because she didn’t need anyone that much.

 _‘Please, oh god please_.’

_Her nails dug into his back, scoring lines down sweat-soaked skin._

_‘I need- please, I need it.’_

On the days of quiet contemplation, she’ll stare out her window, looking into his, and wonder how much of her being ‘in love’ for him had been about the expectations that she should’ve been in love with him. They would have been the All-American couple- he a musical football star, she an honor role cheerleader. Their home would have been perfectly decorated, children well behaved, and Betty…

Betty would have been dead inside.

The scars would have spread, nails in palms were for small stuff like school and difficult people. But living with the façade every moment of every day- for the man that would see her undressed, in every sense, it would have taken her soul. Sometimes, in her darker moments, she thinks it may have taken her life.

She may never stop loving Archie as her childhood best-friend, her family, but sometimes it boggles her mind that they were ever an option in her mind. Why would she choose the person who would only further solidify the pressure of perfection? Teenage dreams and popularized rom-coms come to mind.

What she needed was someone who wanted her, all of her. Even the darkness that billowed out from somewhere below her ribs, even when green eyes went ice cold and hard as stone. Someone who saw the scars on her skin and called her strong for surviving, not called her out with a pitying tone for the pain she’d gone through to gain the strength she now stood with.

_‘You,’ he had whispered when she’d asked him, skin sliding slick against his._

_‘Whatever you want, I can handle it,’ she would whisper back as his limbs shook with the force of something just under his skin._

_‘I just want you Betty. God, I just want you_.’

Chic had played her for a fool and she’d killed him for it. No matter which way the situation was framed, explained, narrative tweaked- he’d lied to her, threatened her, and she’d made certain he payed for it. There are days, warmed by black leather that smells like her because it belongs to her, that she day-dreams about Penny Peabody’s corpse.

There was no more Black Hood, no one to deliver the woman too that allowed Betty to walk away knowing it was handled. It seemed, on her worst days, that little bit would be a non-issue. It was in her blood afterall. Serpent violence intermingled with righteous psychopathy. Does anyone really stand a chance with that combination?

There was viciousness in her skin and rage her bones. It would burn bright for a moment, flashes illuminating the rest of her body in a brilliant show of righteous indignation. They’d be gone in a moment though, Betty settling back into herself, ensuring the slip was only that. Onlookers would be shocked, aghast at witnessing _Good Girl Betty Cooper TM_ lose control, they would assume the worst had passed. But like any survivalist knows- the true heat in a blaze comes from the smoldering coals laying quietly, unassumingly, under the flames.

It was this deep, white-hot smolder that he bore witness to when it was just the two of them, an empty house and an occupied surface. She’d made him bleed more than once, only noticing the bite mark, angry red scratches, or bruise the next morning once the coals had settled. Their heat having seeped into the space between them, leaving her cool for just a moment.

It felt dangerous, to be alone with him, but that sort of thing had the tendency of attracting him instead of repelling him. There were nights when they were tender, she was gentle and soft and breakable. Those were the nights he would caress skin instead of grip it, drag his lips across her neck and shoulders instead of his teeth. They knew one another, on a baser and nearly animalistic level. He knew what she needed and what she craved before a word escaped her mouth.

The days she felt helpless and terrified he would give her control, eyes staring up wide at her with this pleading look of mercy. Those nights he was hers to control, to do with whatever she saw fit. He gave her a moment of power that would propel her for days, even weeks, after. The devotion he demonstrated in those moments would leave her shaking from the sheer force of it.

The days she was spiraling in anger and there was too much pressure, on her throat, her jugular, her ribs, he would grip her tight as he backed her into a wall, a desk, a bed. He would take, tell her exactly what to do and she would give, never a word of protest. The pressure of the decision making lessened, if only for a moment.

These were the nights he whispered in her ear those words that lit her up like an old fashion switch board. The praise that fell from his lips when she did as she was told, when she gave herself a moment to just _trust_ him and not grip on so tightly to her reigns, it left her aching.

Attempting to roll over on his cramped couch was terribly inconvenient and difficult. With more wiggling and stretching though, bright green eyes were able to watch as black curls fluttered with every exhale. Their noses touching from proximity, she leaned her head back just a bit to trace the moles on his skin with her eyes. He was beautiful, even in sleep, despite the dopy look on his face and the cheek that was mashed into the pillow.

A grin stretched across her lips so wide the dimples must’ve been making an appearance. He was so unapologetically Jughead Jones, sometimes it amazed her.

Despite the little speech on his birthday two years ago being more an attempt to put distance between himself and her, she knew how true it rang. It was that moment, making up in a booth at Pop’s, that she began to realize how much in common the two of them had. An image had been created for both of them- perfection and outcast, respectively. There was this unspoken pressure there, to align with it, to identify with it and keep that image up.

But Jughead Jones did nothing by halves. He accepted the mantle of outcast yes, but he dated a cheerleader, was best friends with the town’s golden boy. He loved old movies and wrote during every available moment, but he also took control of a god damn _biker gang_. He fought for peace, but he also carved the skin off a woman twice his age when she threatened his father. Jughead was a study in contradictions and balance and something deep inside her identified with that something deep inside him.

It was that night, when Betty realized just how in love with him she could be if she let herself, that she dropped the last of her walls.

“You okay?” his voice was a mumbled, sleepy thing and it made her eyes crinkle.

“I’m great,” hand sliding up his cheek, thumb stroking across his skin, happiness poured through her body like warm water on ice cold skin.

“Hmph, then stop watching me sleep you cretin,” her laugh was full and thick, tears pooling at the sides of her eyes due to the simple fact she was utterly overwhelmed by him sometimes.

“Pancakes?” The longing groan he emitted encouraged her. “I bought bacon and eggs yesterday too,” he popped one eye open, smirk sliding over his lips.

“Trying to seduce me Betts?”

“Maybe.”

When he told her how _good_ her bacon was, how _perfect_ her pancakes were, she didn’t even flinch.

**Author's Note:**

> I adore the psychological struggles of Betty Cooper (AKA I may identify a little too hard) Next up is Jughead's POV.


End file.
